In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon ended the Vietnam war and Congress ended conscription. So what did the anti-war activists and youthful Marxists of the 1960s – for whom activism had become a full-time profession – do next? Many of them opted for academia, especially for the humanities and the social sciences. They then climbed academia’s ladder, rising from instructor to assistant professor, from assistant professor to associate professor, and from associate professor to full professor.

As a result universities have been transformed into the most Marxist, postmodernist, anti-American, anti-military and anti-capitalist institution in American society. They are now a bastion of situational ethics and moral relativism, and they teach that there are no evil people in this world, only oppressed ones. American academia has become now a very intolerant place. Rightwing speakers have been driven off more than one campus platform.

American students and graduates are usually well trained but apart from what they must learn to make a living, most of them don't know very much. They do know, however, how to feel very sad, very angry or very guilty about their country and its past. That lesson their professors taught them well. What most of them don’t understand, for example, is that China, in return for Sudanese oil, is supplying the weapons used to commit genocide in Darfur. But they feel bad about the Darfurians. Few of them understand that all wealth, including money transferred to governments through taxes, is created by and in the private sector. They don’t fathom that the main reasons for high petrol prices are the speculation in oil futures and the continuing industrialisation of large areas of the world. Instead, they blame the “greedy” oil companies, whose “obscene” profit margins are not nearly as high as most other industries. Nor do they understand that their simultaneous and illogical opposition to nuclear power, coal, liquified petroleum gas, on-shore and off-shore oil drilling and new refineries ensures that we shall have energy shortages and high energy prices.

Professors don't make big bucks in America. What they do earn, however, are huge psychological incomes in the form of power – the power to shape the minds of their students and the power to influence their colleagues. One of the best ways to influence students, colleagues and the citizenry at large is to hire only those people who agree with you. Some time ago, I heard a department head at one of America's most famous universities say in a radio interview that his department did not hire conservatives because they were generally not as smart as liberals.

Since Temple University is not pretentious, it would probably hire me again, but other universities wouldn't. You see, I taught courses like civil-military relations and the politics of national defence. Besides, though once a Democrat, I am now a Republican.